


please don't call me on my bluff

by mockturtletale



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, First Time, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Pining, hypothetical sex tears, sex tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 11:59:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9180568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: Yixing doesn’t think about how his skin feels bare, cold without Jongin’s touch; doesn’t think about how frustrated and pointless he feels when he isn’t under Jongin’s warm, watching gaze; when he’s dancing across a floor or stage in directions that he can’t think of as ‘away from Jongin’ or ‘towards Jongin.’They finish the change and get back out there; the two of them bracketing the entire arrangement onstage; at either ends of the platform but looking to one another often, their eyes locking like this is what they were looking for, when in reality Yixing tries as hard as he can to look anywhere else.They’re counterparts, he and Jongin. Two ends destined never to meet, rarely set to so much as share space.Yixing measures the space between them carefully, constantly.





	

**Author's Note:**

> kpop has ruined my life. the YEAR LONG gap between this and the last fic i posted is the longest i've gone without finishing something in all my time in fandom. 
> 
> since i got into kpop i've started like ... literally thirty fics, but this was the first one i started writing and so i figured maybe if it could be the first one i finished, it could be a sort of hellmouth for the rest. 
> 
> s/o to nina for being felled by these two when she had barely dipped her toe into the waters of kpop, and for following me into the tsunami in the first place. ♥ 
> 
> s/o to ani for making me so hype about all the possibilities that i got mad enough @ myself to clear some space in my wip folder.
> 
> this fic is lovingly dedicated to whatever angel(s) are responsible for [this tumblr](http://kaixing-thirst.tumblr.com/) because in a fandom where kaixing media is thin on the ground, it has kept my almighty thirst q u e n c h e d. ♥ 
> 
> AO3 IS BEING A BUTT AND NOT LETTING ME USE ITALICS SO IN PLACE OF WHERE I USUALLY WOULD I'M BOLDING INSTEAD, I'M V SORRY IF THIS IS OFF PUTTING, I'LL EDIT IT JUST AS SOON AS I POSSIBLY CAN.

 

 

 

 

 

Yixing doesn’t think much of it when he looks down at where he’s struggling out of his shirt and sees too many limbs to be his own. Outfit changes between performances aren’t just tight in terms of time, and with nine bodies to accommodate in such a small space, there are arms and legs and feet and torsos everywhere all the time.

The hand banded tight and insistent around his wrist seems different, though. Purposeful where their interactions at this point are usually unintentional, accidental.

Yixing leaves his shirt where it is; bunched in a creased tangle at his elbows, and flicks sweat wet hair out of his eyes to look up into the face of Jongin, who is looking at him with a question forecast in the lift of his eyebrows, something Yixing can’t place yet making his features tense.

“We look good together, hyung. Don’t you think?” Jongin asks and the expression on his face throws Yixing out of the moment too, because it’s a patient and waiting, wide-eyed pause that says they’ve got all the time in the world to think about the answer when, in fact, they’ve got 40 seconds to change and get back out onstage.

“We … we dance well, Jongin. We’re working very hard tonight, we’re succeeding,” Yixing tells him honestly, because the performance is going well so far; nothing at this point leaves Yixing feeling like he’s going to be awake all night going back over mistakes he’s made, opportunities to go above and beyond that he neglected to take.

“Of course,” Jongin agrees, nodding his head in a way that’s both certain and earnest. “But you and I …. specifically. We look good together, right, the two of us?” he persists, looking down at where his hand is wrapped around Yixing’s wrist; his palm wide and hot on Yixing’s skin, his fingers longer.

Jongin’s always been darker than Yixing especially; the contrast between their skin tones starker than most of the comparisons within the group because as tan and golden as Jongin is, Yixing has always been pale enough for his veins to show through his skin, blue and mauve lines splashed out in crooked splays over his heart like he’s been touched by lightning. Sometimes, in moments a lot like this one, Yixing feels like he fairly regularly is.

“We’re the main dancers,” Yixing says, scrambling for excuses, reaching for anything to say that doesn’t amount to ‘yes we look good together, yes I’ve always thought so’, or worse still: ‘when I’m so tired that I’m hearing colours, so exhausted I look sickly pale, the only thing that makes me feel better is to picture how you’d look next to me, to let myself think about how you’d **feel**.’

“We look great together,” he finishes, half hoping, half certain.

“We’re perfect, the two of us,” Jongin finishes, squeezing Yixing’s wrist lightly once more - a beat that his pulse falls into before Jongin lets go, turning away to finish the costume change.

Yixing doesn’t think about how his skin feels bare, cold without Jongin’s touch; doesn’t think about how frustrated and pointless he feels when he isn’t under Jongin’s warm, watching gaze; when he’s dancing across a floor or stage in directions that he can’t think of as ‘away from Jongin’ or ‘towards Jongin.’

They finish the change and get back out there; the two of them bracketing the entire arrangement onstage; at either ends of the platform but looking to one another often, their eyes locking like this is what they were looking for, when in reality Yixing tries as hard as he can to look anywhere else.

They’re counterparts, he and Jongin. Two ends destined never to meet, rarely set to so much as share space.

Yixing measures the space between them carefully, constantly.

 

_/_/_/_/

 

They’ve never really had any kind of set or specific uniform for practice, saving the matching looks for variety appearances and concerts. Once they’re all wearing something similarly or identically themed enough that it’ll look purposeful if a take ends up being cut for the internet, it can be shorts, it can be jeans, it can be dress trousers, it can be sweatpants.

It can’t be booty shorts, no matter how often or loudly Baekhyun pleads.

Jongin is most comfortable in fitted pants that let him see how his body is moving; anything comfortable enough to sweat in all day long that also gives him clean, clear lines in the mirror.

Almost everyone else is wearing shorts or sweats, Chanyeol opting for basketball shorts and knee high socks with the Batman logo on them because he’s Chanyeol.

Yixing, though.

Yixing decided to dress in the tightest jeans known to man this morning and Jongin can’t for the life of him imagine why.

“Aren’t you hot, hyung? Aren’t those too tight to be comfortable?” he has to ask, can’t help but wonder out loud, when they pause for a water break and Yixing has to bend over to re-tie his shoelaces right in front of him, because that’s just the kind of luck Jongin has - absolutely none at all.

Yixing laughs, twisting his way back upright and reaching to grab one of Jongin’s hands, hooking it around his waist and holding it against his front pocket, Jongin’s palm overlapping the space where Yixing’s tshirt doesn’t quite meet the waistband of the world’s most torturous jeans.

“I don’t have to worry about them falling down - see?”

Jongin can see his own nose wrinkling in response in the mirror and he takes a second to congratulate himself on how it almost actually looks like he’s unimpressed, instead of what he really is - which is about to pop a boner at practice. He’s twenty two years old, he’s an idol and this is unacceptable. But Yixing’s ass in denim that cups and clings tests the abilities of men, of mortals, of gods, Jongin is sure.

“Whatever. Doesn’t seem practical to me,” is all he says, forcefully and purposefully thinking about arctic oceans and naked halmonis as he yanks his hand back and invokes the Herculean effort it takes to step away.

“ **Whatever** ,” Yixing mocks him in english and Jongin doesn’t flush, doesn’t thrill at how he’s pretty much the only person in this room who can make Yixing forget about being the world’s most responsible and respectful hyung for five seconds.

“When was the last time you wore socks, Jonginnie?”

Jongin scowls, hiding the expression under the mop of his hair as he twirls off into another corner of the practice space and drapes himself across Kyungsoo’s back, hoping to ward off the threat of anything else - anything more - with the deepest, truest expression of friendship that he can boast.

‘When was the last time you rolled out of bed looking like anything other than every fantasy I’ve ever had,’ he bites back, but only in his head, where it’s safe to say such things not-out-loud.

 

_/_/_/_/

 

Jongin mostly likes to sit back and enjoy himself in interviews.

Every chance they get, his friends and fellow members are more than willing to publicly humiliate themselves in ways that Jongin finds incredibly entertaining and well - Jongin has always been a **giver**.

Currently, they’re being asked who in the group they feel most close to and it’s an interesting mix of totally obvious answers and hilarious blatant lies.

Kyungsoo, for example, has just said - completely straight faced, thousand-yard stare firmly in place - that Chanyeol is his favourite. Jongin’s pretty sure that out of the last ten or so times he’s seen Chanyeol and Kyungsoo interact closely, Chanyeol has ended up flat on his back with Kyungsoo’s foot at his throat in at least eight of those cases.

They love each other fiercely and wholly, of course, because that’s how they all love one another; hard enough for it to be the only thing that doesn’t hurt, some days. But those two also drive each other up the wall as much they actually get along, so when Jongin laughs, loud and genuinely amused, he’s not the only one.

And then it’s Jongin’s turn to answer the question and there are two or three names he could say if he was being honest, three or four he could say in keeping with Kyungsoo’s theme of total bullshit, but as he glances along the line of them all, his eyes fall on Yixing, who is sitting right at the end and watching Jongin placidly, waiting for him to answer and looking for all the world like he has no horse in this race.

That doesn’t sit well with Jongin.

Jongin wants Yixing to be on the edge of his seat right now.

Jongin needs Yixing to care very much about what he’s about to say.

“I’m closest to Lay, I think,” he finds himself saying and even Yixing looks surprised by it, which sets Jongin’s stomach twisting with something a little like anger, something a lot like regret. They don’t spend the majority of their time together and they’re mostly too busy to call or text much when they’re apart, but if you gave Jongin the choice of anyone in the group to spend time with, anyone in the whole world, probably.

“Yes,” he decides, nodding with certainty, “It’s Lay I’m closest to.”

It’s not an answer that garners much response from everyone else, because no one is about to start arguing about how Yixing isn’t with them enough to be close to anyone, right now, but Sehun leans into Jongin’s side once attention is trained far enough away from them that they can whisper.

“The question was who you **are** closest to, not who you **want** to be closest to, you deviant.”

Jongin frowns, pouting though he tries not to.

“You should save the aegyo for your boyfriend,” Sehun persists, though Jongin is actively pushing him back onto his own seat now, “Maybe Exo’s Lay will finally notice your crush, then.”

“Your eye makeup is much thicker on your right side and it has been this whole time,” Jongin hisses, finally ridding himself of his cruel limpet with a well placed elbowed between Sehun’s rubs.

Sehun gasps and Jongin knows it’s because of what he’s said rather than any physical pain he may have caused.

“I’m only teasing, there’s no need to be so brutal,” Sehun mourns, leaning into Jongdae on his other side, who accepts him with a consoling arm around his shoulders and a frown sent Jongin’s way like he’s the one misbehaving right now. Jongin bares his teeth at him and Jongdae rolls his eyes.

Yixing, meanwhile, still hasn’t looked away from Jongin.

 

-

 

“What was that about, earlier? With Sehun?” Yixing asks as they’re zipping up their coats and pulling on hats before they head out into the cold evening.

“Huh?” Jongin has to ask, partly because his memory is terrible, partly because he and Sehun have gotten into three tickle fights, four play-fistfights and one regrettable but wholly accidental biting incident this afternoon and partly because Yixing is fiddling with the buttons on his coat and looking up at Jongin from underneath his eyelashes. Mostly that last.

“During the interview. He said something to you and you elbowed him? You looked unhappy.”

Yixing is looking at Jongin the way he always does; like he has an endless patience and all the time in the world for him, like he’s not quite sure what he needs from Jongin but is content to wait for it reveal itself, instead. Sometimes it’s Jongin’s favourite thing about him. Sometimes it makes him want to grab Yixing by the shoulders and shake him until some sense of genuine, selfish **want** gets knocked loose. He very obviously doesn’t know what it is that Yixing might want or need, but he knows to his bones that if he did, he’d get it for him.

“Oh. He was just teasing,” Jongin says, because he’s not so bothered by it anymore, certainly not so much that he wants to accidentally sic Yixing on Sehun. Yixing can be terrifying when addressing some kind of perceived wrongdoing or hurt feeling within the group and Jongin wouldn’t wish that upon his worst enemy. Himself, definitely. But that’s a problem for another day.

“Teasing because you gave my name in answer to that question? Why did you, by the way?” Yixing has stopped moving now, his buttons all done up and his eyes serious. To say that Jongin feels **caught** would be an understatement.

“Why not?” he asks, stalling, “Aren’t we close, hyung?”

Yixing holds his purposefully wide-eyed, deceptively innocent gaze for all of three seconds before he’s shaking his head and grinning at Jongin, dimple out in full force, deep enough for Jongin to fall inside and drown in.

“You’re a brat,” Yixing tells him, grabbing Jongin by the shoulders and spinning him around until he’s looking at the top of Minseok’s head, shoving lightly so Jongin walks when he’s supposed to.

It’s unfair, Jongin thinks, that he’s depending on Yixing’s hold on him to get him where he needs to be, when Yixing touching him is exactly why his feet won’t work by themselves.

“We’re close right now, aren’t we, Jonginnie?” Yixing murmurs right in his ear, hooking his arms up over Jongin’s shoulders and crossing them over his chest, up on his tiptoes to reach, with his mouth at Jongin’s throat. The stretch this takes leaves most of his weight on his hold on Jongin, and Jongin wants nothing more than to reach back and take the rest of the strain from Yixing’s legs, hitch them up around his hips and escape out into the night with his prize.

He puts his hands into his pockets and gulps.

“Not as close as we could be,” he says in response, low so Yixing doesn’t have to hear it if he doesn’t want to.

“Hmmmmm,” Yixing hums, close enough that all Jongin can think about is how they’re touching at their hips, Yixing’s chest pressed up into Jongin’s shoulder blades, his lips close enough to be a warm presence against the trembling skin of Jongin’s throat.

It doesn’t feel like ‘no.’

 

_/_/_/_/

 

“Hey Chanyeol. Yeol. Chanyeol. Chanyeol? ChanYEOL, switch with me,” Jongin is saying, insistent enough that Chanyeol actually pays attention to him.

“Wha - what? Switch? Places? What - okay, whatever,” Chanyeol says, shaking his head like he’s muddled, like Jongin is being ridiculous, like he doesn’t care either way.

There’s a shuffle, a pause, the sound of the photographer sighing, but then Jongin is by Yixing’s side and the space between the flashes decreases considerably.

Yixing doesn’t mean for it to happen, doesn’t try very hard or even hard at all to make it the case, but he feels more at ease with Jongin pressed to him and curved into his side, slumping down against him so they’re the same height. Yixing doesn’t wish for it to be true, but he can’t deny that he must photograph easier this way; when he’s having actual emotions rather than simply trying to emulate them for a lens.

“Jongin and Yixing up a tree …” Jongdae sings under his breath as they break to have their make-up touched up and Yixing freezes, biting down so hard on his own lower lip that he tastes blood in his mouth.

Jongin stays exactly where he is; leaning so much into Yixing that he’s almost holding both of their weight, someone combing Jongin’s hair back off his face and someone else dabbing at his forehead with a make-up sponge but Jongin keeping his arm around Yixing’s waist, making no move to stand on his own two feet or afford either of them any sense of personal space.

“Awwww, is someone jealous?” Jongin whispers harshly in return and Jongdae pretends to gasp as Kyungsoo and Baekhyun giggle at the whole thing, but at no point does anyone point out that it’s crazy to suggest that Yixing and Jongin are or could ever be a thing, and Yixing has no idea what’s happening right now or maybe ever.

“What are they talking about?” he chances, whispering in Jongin’s ear and regretting it instantly, because it makes Jongin’s arm tighten around his waist, Jongin’s hand dipping down to cup his hip bone so firmly - so **sure** \- that Yixing’s vision swims for a second, the blank space behind his eyelids blindingly bright with stars.

“Us,” is all Jongin says in return, simple and easy like anything about this is; like someone like Jongin might in a million years pause to glance Yixing’s way.

“Lay. Kai. Eyes forward,” the photographer is barking then and everyone around them is laughing for a second until they become serious once more.

Yixing doesn’t know what the photographer is talking about or what everyone else finds so funny, but most of all he has no idea what to do with the easy, amused way their group seems to take to the premise that Jongin might have a thing for Yixing.

Not in a month of Sundays, Yixing thinks.

Not even in most of my wildest dreams, Yixing mourns.

 

_/_/_/_/

 

“Has it been eight hours so far? I feel like that’s about how long we’ve been waiting,” Chanyeol says, but all things considered he doesn’t look too bored or bothered; draped over Baekhyun the way he is.

“Junmyeon has been cooking for eleven minutes, Chanyeol,” Minseok says in a way that’s stern but not admonishing and Jongin would be jealous of how he masters that tone were it not for …

“I’m staaaaaarving,” Yixing says and he’s got his arms spread out across the back of the couch, his neck tipped back over it, too, so all Jongin can see is the line of his jaw; tilted up to the ceiling, a sharp scaffold of perfectly soft lines built up one of top of another like the skeleton of angles inside a diamond; the jewel in a crown.

Jongin can’t look away.

“Aren’t you hungry, Jongin? Aren’t you starving?” Sehun demands, because Jongin must be the only one who isn’t complaining right now, and even Jongin can admit that that makes a change.

“I …. “ Yixing lets his head fall a little further back, his neck stretched out so much that the tendons in it stand out stark, his collarbones obscene at the collar of his shirt. Jongin is so much more than simply starving.

“I’m actually just gonna … go to … my room,” Jongin says, or hopes he says. His mouth does something other than quiver, he’s pretty confident, although it’s also suspiciously wet at the moment and mostly he’s hoping he isn’t actually drooling.

He beats a hasty retreat, trying harder than he should have to to avoid Yixing’s questioning gaze as he skids out of the room into the safety of his bedroom and the closed door that it provides.

“Fuck,” he says to himself, skull thunking hard against the door as he closes his eyes and pulls at the waistband of his sweatpants, the elastic snapping at his hipbones when he lets it go.

“ **Fuck** ,” he says again, muffled around the chunk of his pillow he has to go and bite into, because he’s shaking against his sheets now, naked and trembling through the aftershocks of making himself come from nothing but the thought of getting to press his mouth to the line of Yixing’s jaw, the smooth curve of his throat.

He doesn’t feel any better, is the thing.

He doesn’t want Yixing any less, is the problem.

 

_/_/_/_/

 

Of all of them, Chanyeol spends the most time online. He’s constantly updating his social media accounts, always totally up to date on what the fans are saying and what’s going on in the haze of mania that surrounds their every move.

Back when they were newly no-longer-trainees, Yixing let himself seek out Chanyeol and his reports of what the world was saying, but these days he knows better.

And yet.

“Aigoo! So KaiSoo is real, huh?” Chanyeol says loudly, because he doesn’t know any other way to say things. He’s making big, mock-surprised eyes at whatever is on the screen of his phone right now and Kyungsoo is leaning over the back of his chair to look too, and then he’s rolling his eyes but laughing as he plucks the phone out of Chanyeol’s sasquatch hands and brings it to Jongin, and Yixing doesn’t find any of this entertaining or acceptable.

“If only they’d gif’d what happened next,” is all Jongin has to say and Yixing frowns.

“.... didn’t you actually put your hand down my pants right after that?” Kyungsoo asks and Yixing stands up from his chair so fast that it accidentally topples right over, the wooden back of it hitting the floor with a crack so audible that every pair of eyes in the room snap to him, framing his miserable embarrassment.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, stooping to pick it back up, keeping his eyes low and apologetic like he’s so used to doing now, when he needs to be so humble and so small that he’s barely there at all.

“I’m just going to go - I’m going to get some water, would anyone else like some?” he asks, desperate to cover up the huge, awkward pause that he has inadvertently introduced to the conversation.

“I could hydrate, let me come with you,” Junmyeon says, the very same way he says ‘we are improving, please anticipate, we will continue to work hard,’ and Yixing doesn’t even care enough to be ashamed right now, he’s so eager to escape this room and so pleased to have a companion that he just takes Junmyeon’s hand and goes.

“KaiSoo is **not** real,” he finds himself saying out loud, though he very much meant not to, and to his absolute mortification, Junmyeon hears it even though it’s uttered under his breath.

“Of course it’s not,” Junmyeon assures him, leading the two of them to a water cooler and pressing a paper cup into Yixing’s hand.

“You’re a very good and kind leader,” Yixing tells him and he means it, he truly does.

“You’re … you’re probably not as completely fucked as you feel like you are, if that helps?” Junmyeon offers.

Yixing appreciates it, even if he can’t bring himself to believe it.

 

_/_/_/_/

 

It’s not something he consciously thinks of doing, but it’s something he probably couldn’t prevent himself from doing if he tried.

Yixing is right there, is all, and he’s got a head and a neck and a set of shoulders, and -

“How come Jongin doesn’t get decapitated for touching your neck, Yixing-ah?”

Jongin kind of wants to make a rude hand gesture at Jongdae, but it would take both hands to truly convey the extent of his ire in this moment and it’s just much more comfortable and enjoyable to keep the hand he has on the back of Yixing’s neck exactly where it is; his palm broad at the top of Yixing’s spine, his thumb and fingers curling a loose, open collar around Yixing’s throat.

He feels the hum of Yixing’s pulse beneath his thumb, and it’s a buzz of quick sensation under the pads of his middle and ring finger when Yixing speaks.

“Because unlike the rest of you, Jongin knows how to be gentle.”

Yixing ducks his head before he speaks, his chin dipping down into his chest, almost trapping Jongin’s fingers in place. He doesn’t say any more, and neither does anyone else, and for a blissful and almost entirely unprecedented moment, everyone is quiet and everyone is still and Jongin is touching Yixing and he’s not getting pushed or pulled away.

Far too soon, the room is set in motion once more by the appearance of managers and the reminder that their time very often belongs to others.

Jongin doesn’t find that he minds all that much, today.

“Yeah,” he tells Jongdae, scrunching up his face at him and sticking out his tongue until Jongdae rolls his eyes and shoves at him. “Because **I** know how to be gentle.”

Minseok appears at their side, literally bumping into Yixing until he pays attention to him, and then they’re stepping off into their own conversation, Jongdae’s question and Jongin’s delight at the answer forgotten about already, probably.

“You’re not at all subtle,” Jongdae tells Jongin, but he says it with an uncharacteristic softness that makes Jongin actually listen to him. “But you know, I think you could be the opposite of subtle and Yixing still wouldn’t get it. He’s … It’s not going to be easy, Jonginnie.”

Jongin doesn’t need Jongdae or anyone else to tell him that nothing about Zhang Yixing is or ever has been easy.

“He loves you, I don’t know why he wouldn’t be **in** love with you, but he’s …” Jongdae trails off, but that’s okay, because the silence he leaves between them is the perfect shape and size for Jongin to fill.

“That’s not enough.”

It’s not difficult for Jongin to say out loud, because he’s heard it in his own head enough to make it familiar; old and simple territory; a well-known and homely kind of hurt.

“It’s okay, hyung. I know.”

Jongdae pats Jongin warmly on the shoulder, walks away shaking his head gently in some kind of sympathetic sorrow.

But it’s okay.

Jongin knows who Yixing is. More importantly, he knows how Yixing is.

It doesn’t change a thing about how he feels.

 

_/_/_/_/

 

Schedule for the day is done and it’s late enough that they should all be in bed, but on most days when they haven’t expended all of their energy and then some onstage, they tend to hunker down in the living room of the dorm for a while at least; just long enough to allude to the fairytale that they’re grown men who get to choose their own bedtimes.

Most of them have showered since they got back, so they’re lying around the room in basketball shorts and tank tops with wet hair and bare feet. The whole room is warmed by their shower-steamed skin, smells like shower gel and moisturiser and shampoo, seems to hum with the sound of their voices and low, soft lamp light.

Jongin is lying on his back on the floor next to the coffee table, with his hands criss crossed on his ribs and the crown of his head touched back to the floor, his face creased up in happy laughter as he shakes with the force of it.

He’d been telling a story about his niece, one they’ve all heard five or ten or fifteen times before, but no one stopped to point this out for the same reason they won’t do so the next time Jongin begins to tell it: his reaction is always just like this and it’s the most entertaining part of the story, hands down.

Even Kyungsoo is rolling his eyes and grinning at how ridiculous Jongin looks; the hem of his tank top kissing the last rung of his ribs as he rocks from side to side with laughter so immersing now that he can’t finish his story, looks to be struggling to breathe.

His arms are crossed over his chest, hands clutching at his sides as if to keep his giggles contained inside the cage of his chest and there are tears at the corners of his eyes, spilling out from under the sweep of his eyelashes and stealing over the dips of his temples into his hair, already damp and still somehow falling perfectly in and out of place like however it lies is on purpose.

Yixing wants to spill off the couch and crawl across the room until he reaches Jongin, and then he wants to push Jongin’s hands away, down to the floor to be held still by his own as he covers Jongin’s body with his, instead.

Yixing wants to trail his lips from the dip between Jongin’s clavicles up along the line of his throat, to hide a kiss underneath Jongin’s chin, to trace the slope from Jongin’s top lip up to the round of his nose with the tip of his nose.

Yixing wants to take and erase every inch of distance between them until they’re one, lying on the floor in a set, Jongin’s laughter rocking Yixing’s ribs, too, the sound of it muffled up into Yixing until they’re the only two who can hear it.

Yixing wants to push his fingers down to lock in between Jongin’s and know what it feels like to have Jongin echo the motion - not just allow it, but return it.

Yixing wants to touch his temple to Jongin’s until he has the tears of Jongin’s laughter salting his cheeks too.

Yixing stays very still where he sits, all the way across the room and oceans and cities and a hundred floors and days and days away from Jongin, and Yixing quietly, desperately **wants**.

 

_/_/_/_/

 

The choreography is a little bit like the choreo for ’Overdose’, but maybe only because there’s this one section toward the end where half of them are on their knees in front.

It’s different, though, because instead of having their arms held up and out in front of them, they’re supposed to put their hands on the backs of their heads, fingers laced together and faces tilted up like they’re under arrest, backs to the audience this time as they shuffle across the floor towards their partner for this part as if under some kind of spell, because that’s what the song is about.

There’s not a lot to it. Not enough space or movement for Jongin to really lose himself in the motions of it, so he’s left with his second option: to find and form meaning for what his body is doing with feeling instead.

“Stay and run this through with me some more?” he asks Yixing when the others are packing up and he steadfastly refuses to see the knowing looks Sehun is sending his way.

“Of course,” Yixing says, his dimple punctuating his smile. He hasn’t reached for his hoodie or his phone yet and he’s by Jongin’s side in an instant, snapping into motion that’s at total odds to the listless way he’d drifted toward their piled up belongings, trailing after everyone else.

“Count us in?” he asks and it sounds strangely like both ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ all wrapped in one.

 

-

 

They huff and sweat and laugh and wince their way through the first three quarters of the routine a few times, always stopping then to go from the beginning again until this time, **this** time, they’re so on it that they just keep going, breathing shallowly and sweating hard by the time they get to the end: to Jongin falling to his knees in front of Yixing.

They haven’t practiced this part; not together, not yet, so it’s brand new and terrifying territory when Jongin makes some kind of concession by tilting his head back further than he really needs to; offering something up for Yixing to take.

And Yixing does take.

The choreography doesn’t call for it, but he fists a hand in the hair at the crown of Jongin’s head anyway. He wants to be gentle. He tries to be, he truly does.

The music is set; beat for beat for beat in so precise a rhythm that there’s neither space nor time for Yixing to tug Jongin’s head a little further back; bare his long and thickly swallowing throat just a little bit more.

Yixing does so regardless, fucking up the timing on purpose for the first time he can ever remember and fucking up everything else when the tension just falls out of Jongin’s body and he goes limp in Yixing’s hands; at his feet. Any and all sense of strain and rigidity melts away for a second, for a beat, for five, and it strangely, insanely, feels as though it’s only Yixing’s hand in Jongin’s hair and the suddenly blazing eye contact they maintain that’s keeping Jongin - well, not on his feet, but kneeling at Yixing’s.

“Hyung,” Jongin says, pleads, and Yixing is going, gone, gone, gone.

It takes nothing at all to bend low enough to reach Jongin’s mouth and that’s the least absurd thing about the act, but that’s what he’ll always remember most.

Yixing leans down just a little and it’s more than enough to get their lips pressed together, Jongin’s lush lower lip soft and full between Yixing’s, snug where it finds its way home.

It’s easy to kiss Jongin.

It’s easier than easy. It’s pure and utter relief to finally let it happen just like he’s always - always - wanted.

Yixing is twenty five years old and he’s been trying for that entire quarter century to do his very best, to always always always do what is good and right, but his mouth has been touching Kim Jongin’s for a fraction of a second and he is already completely assured that he never wants to do good again if the alternative is doing **this**.

And then Jongin’s lips part around a groan so fierce it’s almost a growl, and Yixing stops thinking, probably stops breathing, definitely stops doing any and everything that doesn’t directly pertain to hauling Jongin upright and pushing him backwards towards the closest vertical surface with more conviction than he’s ever had for anything else in his life.

More suddenly and viscerally than Yixing knows how to comprehend, he has Jongin pushed up against the mirrors that line the room and he can feel Jongin’s lip tremble where it’s caught between his.

He should stop this. He should stop literally everything he’s doing and has just done and is thinking about doing next, because this is the worst idea he’d ever had; the most terrible thing he could ever do, but.

Jongin slumps down, the parts of his shoulders left bare by his cutaway tank top making his skin squeak with sweat against the mirror as he slinks low enough that his hips meet Yixing’s and then his arms are up around Yixing’s neck, his hands in Yixing’s hair and maybe Yixing isn’t very good at taking what he wants, but he is, he finds in that moment, very very good at giving Jongin anything he asks for.

‘Please,’ Jongin says with the soft, slick bloom of his mouth under Yixing’s.

‘Yes,’ is Yixing’s answer, touched with a feeling like fireburst with his tongue to Jongin’s.

 

_/_/_/_/

 

“C’mon. I’ll post the selca that shows your good side on my instagram. I’m freezing, hyung, I can’t remember what it feels like to be warm,” Jongdae is definitely whining, but Jongin can’t bring himself to lift his head up into the conversation that’s taking place above him. He’s so tired he’s whatever comes after being dead, he’s pretty sure.

“Take my turn, but post the nice selca anyway, because you’re a good person,” Minseok offers, taking the decision out of Junmyeon’s hands and really he’s the best among them and they all know it.

There’s a hundred people packed into the room besides the members and Jongin sits quietly, very still, until there’s a hand on his shoulder and he has to concentrate all of his efforts on putting his feet one in front of the other in the right order for as long as it takes him to reach the shower stall and not a step further.

It isn’t until he’s hanging his waterproof pouch on the hook high on the wall that his senses come back online enough to notice that the scent he’s about to replace with his own shampoo is that of Yixing’s bodywash. It was Yixing’s hand on his shoulder in the waiting room.

Their schedule is - as always - packed right down to every second with things to do and places to go, but Jongin finds a moment, just one, to put his hands and forehead to tile and breathe.

 

_/_/_/_/

 

As the group’s almost-maknae, it sometimes seems like Jongin spends entire days rolling around on the floor, tumbling through the narrow gaps between the seats in the van, bumping down the stairs of their dorm building on his butt like he’s five years old, giggling like he’s four.

Right now, he’s curled up into an armchair in the quietest corner of a photoshoot, done for the day already and hiding with his knees pulled up to his chest, his hood tugged at to cover his head. The book in his hands is thicker than his insoles.

Yixing, on the other side of the studio, is sitting in a shopping cart that Sehun had coaxed him into.

That is, until he’s lying on the floor next to a shopping cart that’s on it’s side, wheels still spinning madly.

He isn’t hurt, and he is laughing, so it’s probably unnecessary when Jongin strides twenty five feet just to flick Sehun on the forehead but Yixing doesn’t mind when he helps Yixing back onto his feet and even brushes the dust off his knees while he’s here.

“You have a terrible aim and an even worse sense of consideration for other people’s things,” Jongin says over his shoulder as he straightens the collar of Yixing’s shirt and Yixing’s too busy frowning at this to really pay attention to Sehun exiting stage left, skating away across peals of deeply amused laughter.

“Me, you mean?” Yixing asks. “Am I the someone’s thing that you mean?”

Jongin doesn’t answer, suddenly very focused on picking up his book, dropped at his feet to free his hands to Yixing.

“Who’s thing am I, Jongin?” Yixing asks, and still, Jongin doesn’t answer.

 

_/_/_/_/

 

Mostly, Chanyeol and Kyungsoo mess with one another pretty exclusively onstage. Mostly, an audience of tens of thousands is just the right time and place for it.

And so Jongin really couldn’t tell you why it is that Chanyeol has been playing Yixing’s shadow all evening, ghosting along his trail whenever the choreography allows for it, bringing him stuffed animals and fanmade signs and things that glow in the dark like Chanyeol is a crow and Yixing is the perfect nest for his shining treasures.

Jongin also couldn’t tell you why exactly it is that during their ending ment he finds himself compelled to work his way to Yixing’s other side.

If, for some reason, you were to ask, Jongin would have to say that he really has no clue at all as to why it is his hand moves, seemingly of it’s own accord, to brush Chanyeol’s too big, too lackadaisical hand off of Yixing’s shoulder and take it’s place instead.

 

_/_/_/_/

 

It’s Thursday, Yixing thinks.

It’s definitely not Sunday and not Wednesday but it could probably be one of those other days now that he thinks about it and he doesn’t know why he was so set on Thursday now that he thinks about it again.

It’s probably about dinner time by now, he thinks, until he summons the energy to roll his eyes in his head until the neon numbers at his bedside come into view. It’s 3:18am.

But he knows - and truly knows for a fact - that he’s rooming with Minseok, so amidst all of the truths and not truths and possibilities and fallacies and fantasies that are making Yixing’s head pound, it’s the hands that are carefully wiping away his make up that are most out of place. Most **wrong**.

Minseok has very small hands, almost pretty little things. His palms are smooth and his knuckles are soft-edged and his fingernails are meticulously kept cut short.

The palm holding Yixing’s jaw steady is too rough, though the hold itself is so gentle that it makes Yixing want to cry a bit, the same way baby animals and very old people do when he’s this tired, so exhausted that everything feels like too much; as if his every nerve has been worn raw.

There are long fingers dipping cotton pads into makeup remover, holding them in place over his eyes in turn with a patient bend of knuckles that jut nicely, noticeably big enough that Yixing kind of wants to suck on them.

Large, achingly familiar hands are taking such careful care of Yixing, brushing through his bangs ever so slow, and Yixing wants to cry again, is grateful that he doesn’t have the energy to ask why.

 

_/_/_/_/

 

Yixing is away, in China for a solo schedule, and Jongin isn’t stupid enough to think that this would be happening if the situation were at all otherwise. He may be soft, but he is not dumb.

“Alright, you know how this goes, my friends and brothers. Only he who wields the chopsticks of justice may split the pair apart and he to whom the other chopstick is gifted can speak only honestly, from his heart.”

Because Jongin is soft, he accepts this charade alongside his fellow members, which is to say that he doesn’t forcibly take the chopsticks from Baekhyun and use them for something much more important, say stabbing Baekhyun or maybe stabbing Baekhyun.

Generally, they don’t do Chop Truey when anyone is missing, but Jongin knows Baekhyun’s game tonight and he’s confident that this isn’t a one man operation, either.

Honestly, Jongin has neither the time nor the patience to drag this out and so he reaches across the table and takes the chopstick of truth from Baekhyun himself, knowing for sure that he has this ruse all figured out when no one tries to stop him or protest that he’s broken the rules of their one and only sacred ritual.

“Yes, Yixing and I are together, no I’m not telling you any of the details and to be blunt, you probably couldn’t imagine it even if I did.”

The room erupts.

Minseok and Junmyeon clap politely, although Jongin thinks he sees Junmyeon quickly wipe away a tear. Jongdae is riding Baekhyun around the dinner table like a horse, both of them singing different but equally terrible trot songs at the top of their lungs. Chanyeol is scowling and counting money into Sehun’s hand, and Kyungsoo is scrolling through his phone, entirely uninterested.

“I don’t know you did it, my boy, but you finally did. I’m proud of you,” Sehun says, patting Jongin’s head and nodding in a way that he probably thinks looks sage and wizened but in truth gives off a whiff of constipation instead.

“You couldn’t have told us next week?” Chanyeol gripes, but Jongdae saves Jongin from having to answer by smacking Chanyeol loudly across the head as he and Baekhyun make their next lap.

“Yixing will be home by then,” Jongdae reminds him, and oh how Jongin wishes it was next week already. “And you know Yixing would rather die than give up anything he considers a secret. Ancient Chinese warrior spirit style.”

Chanyeol seems to mull this over, narrowing his eyes at Sehun as if he thinks he’s been scammed.

“Speaking of,” Kyungsoo puts in mildly, “Did anyone think about how Yixing might react to us ambushing his Jonginnie when he isn’t here to protect him?”

There is complete silence, at that.

“I thought not,” Kyungsoo nods, standing up from his seat and slipping his phone into his pocket, making for his bedroom.

“Maybe don’t check the group chat before you try to sleep tonight.”

 

_/_/_/_/

 

Because his luck continues to be as elusive as world peace, enough sleep, and days off, Jongin isn’t at the dorm when Yixing finally, finally gets back.

No one dares comment when, upon returning after schedule hours later, Jongin leaves a trail of his outerwear across the floor towards what has just this very minute become his and Yixing’s room.

Yixing has his back to him when Jongin pushes through the door, sitting cross legged on the floor with his portable keyboard across his lap and his headphones on. He doesn’t startle when Jongin touches him. He pauses in his work and lets his head fall forward, offering up the back of his neck like someone else somewhere else might give up the palms of their hands or the stretch of their throat.

“Mine,” Jongin says even though he knows Yixing can’t hear him, pressing the word to every new inch of Yixing’s spine that’s revealed when Jongin pushes his hands up under Yixing’s shirt and lets it pool in bunches between his knuckles. “You’re my thing.”

 

_/_/_/_/

 

 **I miss you.** isn’t an altogether unusual message for Jongin to receive, but it’s odd this time in that Yixing isn’t far away for once. He’s only in the other car.

 **i haven’t gone anywhere ?** he replies, even though he can see that Yixing is typing something else already.

**I hate it when you’re somewhere I can’t touch you. Somewhere I can’t see you.**

Jongin knows the feeling.

 **soon. tonight** he replies, because it’s been all he could think about since they’d left their bed this morning; getting right back into it and getting lost in Yixing.

 **If I can wait that long.** Yixing says and Jongin almost laughs out loud at that, grins as he reads it, because Zhang Yixing is a paradigm of self control. There’s nothing that can deter or misdirect him when he’s set his mind to something.

Jongin’s phone vibrates in his hand again before he can think of what to say.

**Do you know how many times a day I have to get up and walk away from you because if I don’t I’ll kiss you right then, right there, no matter the consequences?**

**Sometimes I have to keep my hands in my pockets just to keep from touching you.**

**When you look at me a certain way, you could have me do anything you asked. Anything.**

Jongin swallows hard.

 **yixing** is all he can say, because it’s all he can think.

 **dont. dont do this to me when i cant do anything about it** Jongin pleads.

 **It’s about time you experienced what I’ve been going through for years. You know that I love you, don’t you?** and Yixing doesn’t really have to ask that, he knows that Jongin knows.

**But do you know that I want you? Do you have any idea how badly I’ve always wanted you?**

**You’re beautiful on stage. You move like things I’ve only ever seen in dreams, but when I have you in my bed I’m awake like I’ve never been before.**

Jongin’s breath gets caught somewhere between his lungs and his tongue.

Yixing, somehow, is brilliant with his words and even better with his body.

What Jongin doesn’t know how to say he’s determined to learn how to show.

 

_/_/_/_/

 

Yixing is making himself at home right where he belongs, thighs spread apart around Jongin’s hips and his ass riding the line of Jongin’s dick, so hard in his sweats that he can feel the head drooling, his boxers sticky already.

“You’re so hot it makes me want to cry,” Yixing says, and Jongin would laugh if it wasn’t for how he’s too busy trying to think of a way to get Yixing naked without letting him out of his lap, his thoughts splintering off to simultaneously think about maybe one day testing Yixing’s claims; already imagining what it could be like to have Yixing riding his fingers and literally crying to come, in tears because that’s just how wound up Jongin gets him.

It takes hardly any effort at all to hook one arm around Yixing’s waist and wedge the other under his thighs, hitching him up and then pushing him back until Jongin can follow him down into the sheets.

Yixing tilts his chin to the ceiling and closes his eyes when Jongin strips him down, handsy as he goes, and Jongin can hardly believe what he’s seeing - doesn’t understand what he could possibly have done to earn this; getting to look at Yixing struggle to keep it together just because of him.

“Want you,” Yixing pants, halfway to struggling for breath before Jongin is even inside him, but that’s kind of the best part, if you ask Jongin.

“C’mon, p-please,” Yixing stutters, like Jongin could say anything but ‘yes, of course, yes, anything, everything, always.’

“I’ve got you,” Jongin soothes him, his hands on Yixing’s wrists, at his elbows, fingers biting into his biceps.

‘I hear you,’ Jongin says, just not out loud.

 

 

_/

**Author's Note:**

> title is from a rihanna song, because i was watching a lot of choreo vids around the time i was writing this and [this one in particular](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQraeOG-3L8&list=FLersw9JsHRd-DqcB6685EOQ&index=12) stayed on repeat for a long time. 
> 
> none of the above is claimed as truth or intended to hurt or slander, please trust me when i say that literally no one is profitting from fanfiction in any which way, shape or form. 
> 
> comments are very very very very very much appreciated and i would also enthusiastically encourage anyone so inclined to hmu on [tumblr](http://mockturtletale.tumblr.com/) andor [twitter](https://twitter.com/hwifighting). 
> 
> thank you for reading!


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